She's never out of sight
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: A second courtship ensued after their marriage.


1\. Adam fell asleep reading many nights, the leather-bound book splayed in his lap. Belle would shake her head, to rid herself of the overlaid image of the Beast in the same armchair, so much broader and taller, his legs reaching half-way across the richly patterned carpet, the upholstery of the chair worn in different places from his shoulders, the marks he'd left with his claws. His eyes were the same, she told herself that though it wasn't entirely true, but it was true enough and she had learned that meant something, from the books of the library he'd given to her when she was still his hostage and from the hours she spent considering their attachment and what else the world could hold for her. She had wanted adventure and when she'd had it, she couldn't enjoy it; she wondered how much risk she was willing to take. She stood and walked to him, to take the book from his lap, to settle herself in its place. She was beginning to know what he felt like as a man and he was beginning to accept the beast had not left him completely, wrapping his arm around her waist tightly even before he opened his blue eyes, letting his voice be something between a murmur and a growl when he woke fully, her hand in the hair he refused to cut. It was a darker gold in the firelight, with other colors, umber, chestnut, tints that her father would have had on his palette. She closed her eyes when he touched her throat with his lips, when he called her _mon trésor_ , when the book slipped to the floor and Adam woke up.

2\. Adam set up his laboratory in the North Wing, where he said the light was best. Belle knew that was important to artists but she hadn't imagined it could make much difference to a scientist. She didn't say that because she didn't want to mar his exuberance, dimly aware that there were differences between what was expected of a friendly companion and of a wife, considering how he had never mocked her once for the ecstasies she'd gone into over his library. Teasing the Beast had come naturally to her but it was not the same with Adam, whose face was so much more expressive and so much harder to read. She might reach out for his hand and catch it easily, without any fear of his claw, ruffle his hair without the chance of grazing the horn that curled from his head like the steam from her tea-cup, but the ease was its own difficulty. She was not sure he would tell her _No, Belle, not now_ afraid she would be offended, but there must be times when her errant caress was not as unexpectedly delightful as butterfly's wing, but instead the fly's distracting, grating buzz. She watched him from the doorway of the room, as quietly as she could, the long apron that covered his linen shirt and dark trousers, his frock coat hanging from a hook, how lithe he was moving among the vessels and glass tubing, lighting the blue flame, sprinkling in powders and pouring colored liquids that looked like syrups in the pantry. He liked the fine work best, lingering over the measurements and the notations; he had missed precision as the Beast, missed his human hands. She had not, thinking his agile mind and those blue eyes were enough, but if she loved him and she did, she did very much, she needed to understand what it had meant to be trapped as he had been and not only as she had. She began by asking him whether he wanted to make a philosopher's stone and smiled at his startled laugh and at night, she asked him to unlace her, laying her own hands over his to keep them on her skin when he was done.

3\. Plumette was not her name. Belle was not sure if anyone knew that. Her name was not Nyoya, not Kalamu, not Unyonya, though Belle had whispered them all to see if the other woman's eyes would change with recognition. She had offered she shared her mother's name, Isabeau, but that her father had never called her so and so it had never been hers. She tried gentleness and curiosity until the housemaid had said,

"I am not a book to read and I have not always been a maid, as you have not always been a princess. If you would know me better, know me better. My name is not yours."

4\. She could not help thinking about little Marie-Laure, who had begun to read while the laundry tumbled in the barrel. She could not help thinking about her friend the book-seller, his two shelves of books and how each one held her fingerprints on every page. She could not help noticing that Adam refused to read any book with an animal in it, not even when she reassured him that _Volpone_ was not truly about a fox and that there was more to Chaucer than the Prioress's lap dogs. She sat down at the desk that had never been alive and wrote a letter.

 _"Dear Monsieur LeBrun,_

 _I have a proposition for you and I very much hope you will accede to it, for it will give me the greatest pleasure and I think you will like it too. The castle holds a multitude of books, some which have never been opened, the pages never cut! and I think they are not books in truth until they are read. Would you be willing to come to me and take some books back to the village, that they might be lent and read by someone who is not Belle, and then returned when their novelty has sufficed? I await your response, your suggestion, your improvement upon this plan, quite impatiently…"_

5\. The bed she shared with Adam was wider than the one she had been given first but every night they found their way to each other at the center. It was summer, so it was hung with curtain in delicately embroidered voile, every sort of white flower along the edges—snowdrops and lilies, rosebuds and daisies and camellias with a thousand tiny petals in a thousand tiny stitches. She supposed the winter hangings would be velvet and she hoped they would be green like the forest was before the snow fell. It was the kind of thought she had while she fell asleep with her face against his bare shoulder. The scars from the wolf were still there and she wondered also at the enchantment Agathe had used and how she had learned it or created it. She liked to touch his man's skin and try to recall how his Beast's flesh had felt; it was a breach in their marriage, one they knew not to discuss, that he had only loathed the form he'd once had and she had…not. She had teased him about growing a beard but she had not missed the way his eyes had become shadowed, less blue and more grey, and she had not mentioned it again. She had known to swallow her cries when she felt his unshaven face against her breast, her belly, the drag against her thighs, and to stroke her hands down his bare back, to say his name _Adam Adam carissimus_ , to sigh and not to bite his lower lip.

He wept in the night, less often now, but enough that she knew he would not remember how he had called her name Belle like there was no other word that meant anything, that he would sob for her to _come back, oh won't you come back_ until she soothed him with a hand at his cheek, something tuneless hummed in his ear. His tears dried on her nightdress instead of the pillow. One day, she thought he would wake and see her, tell her something she should know about how the stone had felt under his feet and he regretted giving her the looking-glass _For I should have needed it more if you never returned_. One day, but not yet. The servants understood the broken nights and never came with tea before nine o'clock.

6\. She'd never enjoyed playing chess with her father, but Adam made a better opponent. They were more evenly matched and he did not survey the board for what seemed like hours, weighing gambits amid his memories. Her husband was a bold player, which suited the jade and carnelian set, the exquisitely inlaid field, the room full of candles. It was not difficult to divine his favorite strategies and he had not had much practice in schooling his human face; impassivity had not been required of the Beast when he played against a mantle clock. Belle found she preferred an eclectic array of openings, willing to lose if it made for an unusual, unpredictable battle. She did not pout when Adam knocked took her queen, not even when he knocked down her king in his gilt crown, accepted her defeat with his warm kiss in her open palm.

7\. Belle found Gaston's grave by accident. She was walking the grounds alone, learning where it was garden and where meadow, where there was a collection of marble nymphs cavorting and where a fountain had kept its moss even after the enchantment had been lifted when she found the pretty does, the three fawns, the young buck with his untested antlers, at the salt lick that had no place so close to the castle. There were dark stones that had no mica in them at all, just a flat surface that blunted any light, in the vague shape of a gun, flaring like the muzzle. She thought she should bring a flower when she returned, something that said she knew a man had died but she could not imagine what blossom she would ruin by making it Gaston's, not when she thought of how gleefully he had hurt her father, traded on Adam's decency and tried to murder him for sport. Let the deer consume Gaston and their shit might seed his resting spot with cinquefoil, vetch, rampion mignonette.

8\. They hadn't spent their wedding night in the castle. She had expected Adam to take her hand and walk with her up the winding staircases, up to a room they had never shared before that would be strewn with roses and fragrant gardenias, a flagon of wine by the bed; the casement would be open to the dusk, the green hills getting ready for moonlight. He had taken her hand and looked about quickly, then tugged her a little and tilted his head as if to say, _Come along_ and they had dashed from the ballroom through a door she'd never noticed and she had caught up her hem at her sash as she'd been wont to do so she could run as quickly as he did. They'd passed the rose garden and the willow-bank, a copse of birches and aspens, and then found themselves in front of a small thatched cottage with window-boxes full of pansies.

"You'll like this better, won't you? The castle isn't home, not yet, but this felt like a place we could make ours…and that's the only place I want to be tonight," he'd said, hardly winded by their escapade, his eyes very bright.

"What is it?" she'd asked, breathless from running, from the way his hands had strayed to her waist as soon as they'd stopped, the prospect of the night ahead without anyone near but Adam.

"A gamekeeper's cottage, I suppose? It's not fine enough to be a dower house and it's rather hidden. I had Mrs. Potts clean it out and your father brought a few things by. I thought it would be a retreat, a place for us to be Adam and Belle, not the Prince and his Lady, Monsieur and Madame, the village patrons. If you don't like it, we-"

"I love it. It's perfect. I won't feel so…strange here," she'd interrupted, smiling, and then he stepped closer and picked up her as easily as he would have done when he was Beast.

"Let's go home then, my darling," he'd said. When an hour later she rose and took him by the hand, she'd already known where the bed was and she had led him to it. The quilt was one she had bought in a market outside Nantes and she'd calmly turned so he could unlace her stays, waiting for his hands to make a second set.

9\. "Belle, you're not happy," Adam said after she circled the room the third time; it was a large room, so the circle had been wide and she had thought by the time she returned to where he sat before the fire, she would have thrown off her melancholy. It hadn't worked, just as the fresh pot of chamomile tea Mrs. Potts had brought up with tea-cakes hadn't worked, nor had _Twelfth Night_.

"I am," she insisted, as if saying the words could make it so. Adam set aside the book he'd been perusing, laying it atop the somewhat perilous tower next to him, and patted his empty lap. Belle sat down and sighed as Adam looped his arms around her waist.

"You make a poor liar, _ma biche_ ," he said. There had not been anyone to speak to her this way before. Her father loved her dearly but he'd always been abstracted, in an endless conversation with her lost mother, and she'd had no sister, no aunt, no friend in all their travels.

"I don't want to be unhappy," she replied. "I shouldn't be, I have my heart's desire," she added, kissing him on the cheek, then drawing back.

"But you are. Do you know why?" he said equably, not derailed by her.

"This isn't…it isn't what I'm used to," she admitted.

"No grinding poverty? Manual labor, only two books, an endless parade of sautéed turnips?" he said, his voice amused but still curious.

"I complained all the time about the village, but I think I miss the market, going to the book-seller and hoping there will be something new, helping Papa with his clock-work," she said.

"You wanted adventure, no? And you haven't got it anymore. You have the lap of luxury," he offered, smiling, patting her thigh through her full silk skirt.

"We have a wonderful life, Adam. I love it, But what does it mean?" she asked.

"Why, I don't know. That's actually a superb question. It should mean something, beside our pleasure though there are days when that seems like all I could ever want. I propose we try to answer your question," Adam replied. He sounded engaged and intrigued and she felt her bad humor begin to ebb, and kissed him on the tip of his nose.

"Perhaps dinner first? I shouldn't like to disappoint Mrs. Potts and I think she's making a soufflé," Belle said.

"I'll go see to the wine then," Adam said, helping her up as he stood, kissing the side of her neck deliberately, humming against her throat.

10\. "You should let me use the liniment," Belle said. "I know you don't like how it smells, but it always helps."

"Mrrwhow," Adam growled, muffled by the pillow. The room was gloomy, the windows full of the rain outdoors, the shadows ascendant. It was the kind of day when his injuries bothered him and he snarled when she suggested they forgo their ancient Greek lesson.

"It's the rain, Adam. I can't think why Agathe did not repair the wound when she healed you but I wasn't in a position to ask her," Belle said, stroking his hair, resting her hand against his shoulder where she knew he ached the most.

"Hurts," he muttered and she leaned over the murmur in his ear.

"I know, I know—let me help you, let me make it better, _mon coeur_. I'll read to you if you like and you can sleep," she said, dropping a soft kiss at the angle of his jaw.

"Only if you agree to take a bath with me later, to rid us both of the horrid scent of the balm," he said.

"Of course. I'll scrub your back," she offered and he laughed, a warm, dirty laugh she'd learned the import of.

"That's not exactly what I had in mind."

11\. "Madame Belle, I have served a banquet to one hundred dignitaries and hosted the Duchesse de Valois. I think I can manage dinner for your father," Mrs. Potts exclaimed. Sometimes Belle could not help seeing her as the boiling teapot, steam pouring from her, shaking on the trivet.

"I do beg your pardon. It's only, I have been so looking forward to this and I know, he doesn't eat unless he's reminded. But his favorites, pate and quail, a perfect béchamel sauce, I could never master it, you know, he'll eat well. He wouldn't agree to move here with me, not even when we told him about the South Wing, how his only company might be a cloud of bats and I worry about him," Belle explained, twisting her heavy gold wedding ring round her finger, wiping her hands on her taffeta overskirt as if it were a poor linen apron.

"Ah, _ma petite_ , I know, I know. To think of Mr. Potts, all those years without me—the state of his undergarments was something beyond earthly comprehension, I know how you feel about your father. But perhaps he was right," Mrs. Potts replied, her ruffled feathers soothed.

"I don't understand," Belle said.

"He wanted you to be happy, to be happy with the master, and not to trouble yourself about him, to think he might walk in and find you-"

"Find me? Find…us?" Belle interrupted, flushing a little.

"Madame, I hope I don't speak out of turn, but all of us servants, we've found you…in circumstances quite appropriate for the bedchamber. But in the library, the laboratory, the solarium, the parlor, the ballroom," Mrs. Potts said, evidently prepared to list every occasion someone had found her in Adam's arms, his mouth on hers, his hands…everywhere, as they were allowed to be.

"Yes, yes. I see. I see how my father might have wished to forgo any chance of such an…encounter."

"And you as well, Madame. Else we'll never have any little feet running pit-a-pat through the halls, now will we?" Mrs. Potts said comfortable. Belle blushed rose-red then and nodded hurriedly before she excused herself.

"Now I'll be able to bone those quail in peace," Mrs. Potts murmured to herself. Belle had likely gone to the garden to cool her face and she'd find the prince there. There would be ample time to finish the dinner preparations.

12\. Belle knew there had been other women. Before, a lifetime ago, when he had been the supercilious prince who would have turned Agathe out into the night, to a storm and the wolves that commanded the woods with their green eyes, their curling howls, he had taken his pick and his bed had never been empty unless he chose. Mrs. Potts and Plumette and Lumiere had all slipped at one time or another and said something incontrovertible, each trying to soothe the state of distress they imagined she would feel at the mention Adam's lovers. She found it was easiest to let them cluck and demur and offer aphorisms, rather than to try to disabuse them of their beliefs. He had told her everything before they married, everything she'd asked and nothing more that she hadn't. He had been another man then, not even her mercurial Beast, and she could not find jealousy within her heart nor condemnation. She'd recognized he was surprised himself at the truth—that when he touched her, it was something apart, a union of soul and body as their marriage vows had promised, his delight found only within hers. His other experience was nearly irrelevant to them; indeed, she found herself more confident as his virgin bride, sure that her hand here would make him sigh and there, _oh! a little lower_ , would make him gasp and hold her tightly. She coaxed him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her slender leg hooked over his thigh or rocking on his lap with his hands at her hips, murmuring in his ear _Beautiful, so beautiful Adam, please_ until all that was left was the moan behind the words, his blue eyes half-blind when he spent, his cry always the same _Love_ , her name, his commitment, what was between them, her gift, his praise, their future.

13\. They looked at the crystal flagon with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity; the liquid within was opalescent and it smelled of hyssop and honey, the first apples and the tartness of rose-hips.

"Is it safe?" Adam asked, almost as if the vessel were some exotic diamond-scaled lizard he wished to poke with a stick.

"I've never known Agathe to make anything that wasn't," Belle replied.

"You must see how that is not a consolation to me," Adam said and Belle turned to face him.

"You know I don't mean it like that—I only knew her as Agathe for so long and she was such a help. She saved Papa but also so many other of the villagers if they were sick, she would assist them if the apothecary would not give them anything, if they hadn't the money. And potions are not spells, not really," Belle said.

"We can leave that last to another discussion but I suppose, do you want to take it?" he asked.

"I think I do. I know Mrs. Potts is simply longing for a tribe of babies, but we've not been married very long and I'd rather it was only the two of us for a while yet. Do you mind? Am I a terrible wife for saying so?"

"You're never a terrible wife, Belle. And wanting this time for us alone, you can't think I don't want the same thing. I wasted my life before I was the Beast and I don't want to anymore. But I'd rather be Adam for a while before I become Papa and I am still selfish, I don't want to share you, not just yet," Adam said earnestly.

"She said it won't empty until I decide I don't want it anymore and then it will be as if I never took it," Belle explained, pouring a measure into a chased goblet and raising it to her lips.

" _Salut, mon ange_ ," Adam said as Belle swallowed the tonic, wrinkling her nose a little.

"That bad?" he asked.

"It's just I've never cared for rose-hips," she remarked and he bent to kiss her, licking her parted lips delicately.

"Mm-mm. Perhaps we can find a way to leave you with a sweeter taste in your mouth," he offered.

14\. Maestro Credenza had a conciliatory expression on his painted face and Belle knew there would be extravagant flourishes disguises what must be said. She was a Frenchwoman and practical and she decided to save them both.

"It's no use, Maestro. You are an excellent teacher but I'm afraid I am the worst pupil. Your instruction is clear and you are so very patient, but I don't think I can learn to play the pianoforte," she declared. She remembered when the castle was alive and heard the sigh of relief from the walls, the curtains, the many-paned windows in their frames.

"No, no, madame, I think, with practice, a great deal more practice and perhaps prayer…" he began, his eyebrows nearly dancing off his face—in a minuet or a quadrille? She could not decide.

"It won't help. I can't hear the music as you do, I can barely tell the notes are wrong until I see your face and my fingers might as well be _boudin noir_ for all the skill I can muster. It's funny, really, since they serve me well enough in other regards," she said, thinking of her needlework, the letters she wrote to M. LeBrun, how she had adjusted the clockwork gears. The maestro had other ideas.

"Oh, la! Madame, how daring you are!" he exclaimed, winking at her and she blushed.

"I didn't mean," she said, breaking off before she could say anything more, imagine, remember anything more of how Adam's face had looked in the morning, how his mouth had felt catching her thumb…

"I shall be very happy to listen to the music, to enjoy your talents. I shall bear the disappointment at my failure very well, I think," she said firmly, striving to sound like a settled matron, the gracious, aloof princess Adam laughed to see.

"Might I make a suggestion, madame?" Maestro Credenza's eyes were dark and kind, his voice without any affectation for once. She nodded.

"The prince, he was a very fine musician once. He might be encouraged to return to his playing and a private concert, a private lesson with him, these might help you discover if there are any hidden depths of talent within yourself. And if not, well, he did not marry you for your ability to perform Bach. You will not be surprised to learn, the prince has always liked a receptive, an effusive audience."

"An audience of one?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I should think that is all he needs, madame."

15\. "Do you remember your mother?" Belle asked. It was the kind of question that was suited to the bedchamber, the hangings drawn against the night, a little world of their own with spangled stars embroidered in silver gilt thread on the canopy above. It was a question for voices and not gazing into each other's eyes, not trying to divine the truth from how he dropped those long lashes, how his jaw tightened. It was a question he would answer but there would be one for her, sure to follow, just as hard.

"A little. I was seven when she died," he said and Belle knew this was a voice of Adam's she had not heard before, the sound of a very old grief, bewildered and hopeless.

"What do you remember?" she said. His heart had beat beneath her ear between each word.

"She liked to sing a song about a lark. She didn't care for my father's hounds. She had a great bunch of keys and ribbons at her waist and a pair of combs set with jewels that peeked from her hair," he said. He ticked off the memories like the old women did their prayers on the rosary.

"Is that all?"

"She was sad, I think, but not when we were alone. I remember, they told me she would not be sorry to go to heaven for she'd been named for it, Marie-Celestine, but I thought they were wrong," he replied. "I thought she would miss me, she always said she did when we were apart."

Belle let her hand move to his waist, above the crest of his narrow hip, and stroked her cheek against his chest.

"And you, do you know anything about your mother? You were only a baby," he said.

"Only her name, Isabeau, and how my father painted her. I don't know what she was like, only her reflection," Belle replied and she knew he would hear how she envied him, although her father had been loving and his had not, for having something when she had nearly nothing at all.

"I'd like one of those music boxes your father makes," Adam said. "I'd like to see what he remembers. Maybe you'll dream of her one day. You might, no one knows what a baby recalls."

"Mmm. I'd like to hang the miniature of your mother in my sitting room. I'd like to see her face and see how much of her is in you," Belle said.

"All right. Tomorrow then. Now kiss me good-night," he murmured and she pushed her face up to his for a kiss that was comfort and memory, the consolation two orphans could share.

16\. "Oh, it's so bright," Belle moaned, flinging an arm over her face. She regretted it immediately, the speed of the movement unsettling her uneasy stomach. She heard Adam chuckling softly, felt the bed dip under his weight.

"It's as bright as it always is when the sun shines, Belle," he said.

"No, it's not. I can't believe that's true," she whined. She would hate herself for making such a sound if she did not already hate herself for so many other mistaken choices. "You must think me the greatest fool, you must be disgusted…"

"You seem very certain. But I'm bound to tell you you're wrong, on all counts," he replied, his finger light brushing away the strands of hair clinging to her cheek.

"Everything is wrong," she muttered.

"Drink this, it'll help," he said, holding a cup to her lips. She managed to swallow what he offered, the astringent taste of the herbs more pleasant than she would have imagined.

"I feel the same," she said and he laughed aloud, making her grimace.

"It's a tonic, cheri, a restorative, not magic. You and Agathe have an arrangement but it does not include me. Drink a little more and then sit up slowly. I've asked Mrs. Potts to send along some tea and broth, a little toast," he explained.

"I'm so embarrassed, Adam," she said.

"Do you think I've never over-indulged? I take it as a sign we must drink the better vintages more regularly, so you aren't tempted to guzzle down an entire bottle again," he said, his amusement and affection clear in his tone and in his gaze when she managed to open her eyes.

"Do you think I wanted to marry a saint? It is very hard, sometimes, when you are so good, so virtuous so naturally and I required a spell and nearly dying to achieve only half of what, of who you are," he added. She would have shrugged off his suggestion about her character but she thought better of it.

"And besides, it is a pleasure to be able to take care of you without having to worry that you are in any real danger. Sometimes, I like to cosset you and you don't make it easy," he said.

"I think you shan't have any trouble today," she said, sinking back into the pillows with some relief from the tonic, the change in the light as the sun went behind a bank of clouds, Adam's hand patting her own gently.

17\. "You always smell like springtime," Adam murmured against her neck. "Like violets and lily-of-the-valley and those little pink flowers, thrift I think it's called." She turned and kissed him.

"You always smell like summer," Adam murmured into her loosened hair, having scattered all the pins to the floor. "Like night-blooming jasmine and red roses, like lavender in the sunshine." She turned and kissed him.

"You always smell like autumn," Adam murmured along her breastbone, his unshaven cheek rough against her bare skin. "Like apples and rosemary and wood smoke." She turned and kissed him.

"You always smell like winter," Adam murmured into her ear, his arms beneath her velvet robe, stroking her waist. "Like the snow coming and cloves, like myrrh." Belle turned and kissed him. And kissed him until he lifted her up and brought her to bed.

18\. "I'm hungry," Belle declared, shrugging her robe onto her shoulders. Adam kept reading in front of the fire in the sitting room that adjoined their bedchamber.

"Ring the bell, I'm sure Mrs. Potts will make you whatever you want," he said, turning the pages, enjoying how easy it was without claws to remember, how good it felt to no longer be so clumsy, even if he was less strong.

"I don't want to bother her," Belle replied, walked over to where Adam sat, settling herself in the armchair next to his, tucking her bare feet up beneath her. How was this lovely wild thing his wife? Her chestnut hair streamed down her back and her throat was nearly irresistible, revealed by the folds of her silk robe.

"It's not bother, you know that," he said. Mrs. Potts would say the same but Belle had trouble believing it.

"Adam, don't you ever want to sneak down to the kitchen yourself?"

"You paint an interesting picture. Are we sneaking together? And what do you plan to bring back?" he asked. It would never have occurred to him to go to the kitchens himself; meals, hors d'oeuvres, any tempting morsel simply appeared when he asked, right away and with a flourish or an apology as suitable garnish.

"Of course we are sneaking down together! What fun would it be otherwise? And I don't want anything fancy, anything elegantly prepared the way Mrs. Potts would do it—I only wanted something plain, some apples and some cheese, the end of a loaf. Peasant food, I suppose you'd say," Belle answered.

"I'd say no such thing. It sounds perfect…except that we must bring back a flagon of wine and _calissons_. You have whetted my appetite, madame, and now you must help me satisfy it!"

Belle grinned then and rose, ready to scurry to the kitchens. He did not tell her what he imagined, kissing the sweetness of the candy from her lips, licking up the drops of wine wherever they spilled, spilling the wine wherever he wanted, wherever she desired.

19\. "Ah, this is nice," Belle sighed, dabbling her bare feet in the cool water. Her cheeks were flushed bright red and there was a sheen of sweat over her face, making the loose tendrils of her hair stick to her neck.

"But it's not exactly what you want, is it?" Adam said. He looked cooler but then he would, having swum briskly from one side of the river to the other and then floating for some time while they both spun stories about the figures they saw in the clouds.

"You didn't want to swim in the river," he added and Belle had to restrain herself from licking the water droplet that was languorously traveling down his bare arm. She shook her head.

"Not today," she said.

"What did you want?"

"The sea, the shore empty except for the gulls, the sun nearly white in the sky," she said dreamily. She wanted wideness and the enticing fear of the ocean, to feel so much herself and yet very small, to catch Adam's hand and run along the line of the surf.

"And nothing else?" he prompted, lying back on the mossy bank, an arm outstretched to her.

"You, I wanted you with me," she said, reluctant to move, eager to be held.

"All of it, I'll give you all of it, Belle."

20\. She'd agreed to his request with one except—the dress.

"I don't know what Madame Garderobe was thinking, or what I was," she said, surveying the yellow silk, closer to citron than saffron, the many hems embroidered with gold swirls and flowers.

"What do you mean?" Adam asked, rubbing a piece of the silk between his fingers. He often said it was nothing compared to her skin and she accepted the exaggeration with a small smile.

"The color, the style, none of it suited me then, nor does now," she explained. "Yellow is such a difficult color to wear and this, this is like a thousand daffodils sewn together," she added.

"I like daffodils," he replied.

"So do I, in a garden bed. The bodice is so unflattering and there isn't an ounce of couture to be found in it. It looks like a dress I might have designed as a child of seven, if I'd ever been interested in something so…cliched," she said, sniffing a little.

"I wonder what an ounce of couture would look like," Adam teased. "Besides, I like this dress. It's the dress you wore the first time I admitted to myself I loved you and that you just might, someday, somehow, love me back."

"I know. And I remember how it felt when I put it on and when we waltzed, it floated around me," she mused. He'd been the Beast then, not Adam, not her husband nor her lover, only the creature who jailed her and could free her, whom she found herself caring for, more and more…

"But, couldn't I wear something else? I love that you want this to be our tradition, our private anniversary ball, just you and I, but couldn't I wear something else? Something that suits me, who I am now and not who I was?" she asked.

"You should wear whatever you please. You're beautiful in anything. Only, perhaps, could there be just a little yellow somewhere in the new ballgown? Just a little glimpse to remind me of the Belle I once thought would never take my hand?"

"Of course. But only a little. Because this is the Belle who will always take your hand. And will never let it go," she said, reaching for him, parting her lips as he kissed her, holding his hand against her heart.


End file.
